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Mader's disjoint S-paths problem unifies two generalizations of bipartite matching: (a) non-bipartite matching and (b) disjoint s–t paths. Lovász (1980, 1981) first proposed an efficient algorithm for this problem via a reduction to matroid matching, which also unifies two generalizations of bipartite matching: (a) non-bipartite matching and (c) matroid intersection. While the weighted versions of the problems (a)-(c) in which we aim to minimize the total weight of a designated-size feasible solution are known to be solvable in polynomial time, the tractability of such a weighted version of Mader's problem has been open for a long while. In this paper, we present the first solution to this problem with the aid of a linear representation for Lovász' reduction (which leads to a reduction to linear matroid parity) due to Schrijver (2003) and polynomial-time algorithms for a weighted version of linear matroid parity announced by Iwata (2013) and by Pap (2013). Specifically, we give a reduction of the weighted version of Mader's problem to weighted linear matroid parity, which leads to an O(n^5)-time algorithm for the former problem, where n denotes the number of vertices in the input graph. Our reduction technique is also applicable to a further generalized framework, packing non-zero A-paths in group-labeled graphs, introduced by Chudnovsky, Geelen, Gerards, Goddyn, Lohman, and Seymour (2006). The extension leads to the tractability of a broader class of weighted problems not restricted to Mader’s setting.
@InProceedings{yamaguchi:LIPIcs.ISAAC.2016.63,
author = {Yamaguchi, Yutaro},
title = {{Shortest Disjoint S-Paths Via Weighted Linear Matroid Parity}},
booktitle = {27th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2016)},
pages = {63:1--63:13},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-026-2},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2016},
volume = {64},
editor = {Hong, Seok-Hee},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2016.63},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-68325},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2016.63},
annote = {Keywords: Mader's S-paths, packing non-zero A-paths in group-labeled graphs, linear matroid parity, weighted problems, tractability}
}